


1, 2, 3!

by number0thefool



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Afterlife, Alternate Universe - Beetlejuice (1988) Fusion, Bureaucracy, Domestic Fluff, Everyone Is Gay, Horror, Humor, Implied Sexual Content, Jaemin is a Poltergeist, Mentions of Death, Mild Gore, Multi, Swearing, Tonal Inconsistency, WHICH IS JUST THE WAY I LIKE HIM, and as always, if you read into this too much it falls apart so.. try not do that, jaemin is unhinged, minor cameos from other neos, renjun and jeno are the married couple that die, side chensung, side kunil, yes he's beetlejuice
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-18 14:33:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28868586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/number0thefool/pseuds/number0thefool
Summary: “Renjun?” His husband’s nudging his arm again. “Renjun we’re dead, we don’t own anything anymore.”“I’m afraid I have to agree with your husband here. As much as this house was yours, whatever happens to it now is what you agreed on with your realestate agent in case of, well, unforeseen circumstances.”It’s all a little too much now. He issues a few quick goodbyes and hangs up as quickly as he can before looking Jeno dead in the eye. “What did we put down in the in case of dying section?”
Relationships: Huang Ren Jun/Lee Jeno, Huang Ren Jun/Lee Jeno/Na Jaemin
Comments: 9
Kudos: 25





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GOOD GOD!!
> 
> okay so the idea of this came to me in a fever dream and it took me like 4 months to get all my ideas in order. norenmin is a pretty classic pairing i think and i wanted to add something to the genre which holds such classics as jeno and hyde and your night of lilac. 
> 
> the general idea of this fic is renjun and jeno being suburban husbands who are disgustingly in love and then one day they die and then accidently fall in love AGAIN with the demon they've enlisted to kick the new family (kun and taeil and their emo son jisung) out of their house.
> 
> and mood for this fic is, i believe, contained in weewoo by pristin (naturally the title 1, 2, 3! is from dream's best song and i will say nothing more on the matter)
> 
> [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2q5CIZFJ9dU4qIWiNIHGyW?si=ODfc53OwRBewdNpbGRT36A)

1.

They've been in the waiting area for hours now, LED lights and the hum of office machinery eroding what’s left of his mind. His head still hurts from the airbag. In the seat beside his, Jeno fiddles with the piece of paper with their number on it – a red-haired receptionist had given it to them when they’d first woken up.

“6053rd, huh?” Renjun’s husband smells like gasoline and singed hair.

“Someone over there said it’s just the numbers for today,” he says, nodding his head towards the rows of white plastic seats in the room. Each sits a person in various states of decay; a bored-looking old man with a knife sticking out of their abdomen, a group of lab students with dazed expressions and missing eyebrows. 

He's about to get up and ask if this place has a bathroom but before he can do so, the speaker system calls out their number. The two of them stand up, still a wobbling a little from the impact of their car falling into a ravine, but they make it up to the service counters in once piece.

“Okay, which one of you is Huang.” The receptionist’s eyes are half open as they look over the PDF on their computer screen. Renjun waves his hand slightly but the receptionist entirely ignores him.

“My name’s Ten,” he drawls, “I’m in charge of your case today.” Jeno rests his hand on his husband’s shoulder, intending it as some kind of reassurance. “You’re here because your car got knocked off the mountainside freeway?”

“Yes.”

“By a falling rock?”

Jeno steps in this time. “Yes, a falling rock.”

Ten yawns and looks them both over before picking up the phone on his desk and speaking into it quickly, his voice inaudible over the enormous photocopy machine behind his desk.

“Our afterlife system is a little clogged at the moment so you’ll have to wait a month or so before the bus to heaven comes to pick you up,” he trails off, narrowing his eyes at the computer screen. “In the meantime you’ll need to stay at your previous accommodation and if that is currently unavailable we can book you a hotel room here.” Ten’s voice has become robotic and if it was fair to say so, Renjun expected a little more from the afterlife rather than bureaucracy and employees working the night shift.

Neither of them respond.

“That’s it then! please make your way to the foyer where accommodation is dealt with. Have a lovely evening.” His deadpan tone haunts Renjun for days to come.

“He was glaring at us at the end,” Jeno hisses in renjun’s ear as they leave the waiting room hand-in-hand. he hallway is much quieter and to his surprise, air-conditioned.

The bus, on the other hand, isn’t much quieter. Renjun takes a window seat up the front, pulling Jeno in beside him before his husband is trampled by the line of people making their way onboard. He speaks once they start moving, afterlife administration building growing smaller and smaller behind them. “We’re really dead, huh?”

“Yup.”

2.

“Well I can’t let you on if you’re not on the list!”

Renjun lays his patterned dufflebag down on the tarmac and takes a deep breath. “We were told a month ago that there’d be spots on the bus for us.” He looks to Jeno for backup and all his husband does is nod furiously – they’d have about taking initiative later.

“Sir, this bus is on a schedule and if I don’t leave soon we won’t make it to our last stop in time for when the gates Up There shut.”

While the driver talks, Renjun tries to nudge the first of his suitcases under the bus into the storage space and is met with an exhasperated look. “Sir, I can’t take your luggage if you’re not a passenger.”

Another deep breath. “Can you at least take our things later and hold them in whatever porter’s office is Up There until we arrive?” At this stage, Jeno’s making faces at next door’s cat which had somehow wondered up the hill and onto their front porch; it eyes their exchange with the driver and a bus full of slightly annoyed passengers in visors and billowy shirts with great disgust.

“Honey, let’s just go back inside and call the number at the back of the pamphlet,” Jeno says into his ear after a full ten seconds of Renjun staring down the driver, grip tightening on his suitcase handle.

“Fine! Fine.” Hands thrown halfway into the air, Renjun begins to haul his luggage back up the driveway to their house, scowling the whole way. _See you in heaven, fucker,_ he hisses to himself as the bus disappears down the road.

3.

They’re seated around the dining table now, each eyeing the glasses of wine in front of them that they somehow can’t consume; Renjun swirls the liquid in his glass around all the same. In between them is their home phone, a wretched pop song playing out of its speakers while small audio snippits about ‘stellar customer service’ fade in and out.

“We’ve been on hold for almost fifteen minutes, you know.” He’s too tired to sulk anymore and seeing this, Jeno gets up onto his feet and comes around to Renjun’s side of the table, taking a seat beside him and nuding his husband’s head onto his shoulder.

“Can’t be much longer,” he says assuringly. “After all, they did promise good customer service.”

“ _Stellar_ ,” Renjun corrects him and they both laugh before descending into miserable silence again.

But before long there’s a cracke of static and they both sit up straight. “Heeello, this is Shotaro, your case worker!”

“What happened to Ten,” he says somewhat accusingly before pulling himself back together. Shotaro’s voice was bright and cheerful and though Renjun was in a sour mood, he had no intention of dragging an unassuming employee into this mess.

“Lunch break. So, how can I help you today?”

Thankfully, Jeno takes the lead on this one. “We were supposed to be on a bus to Heaven today but for some reason they denied us entry? Something about not being on the list?”

Shotaro speaks again after a few keyboard sounds come through the phone speaker. “Yes, that sounds right.”

Renjun narrows his eyes. “What do you mean, _sounds right_?”

“It says right here that you have unfinished business and naurally we can’t let you through until you take care of it. Something to do with your belongings, I believe. Nothing else written here.”

“I’m sorry, there’s something under my _roof_ that’s preventing me from having a perfectly happy afterlife after I died a horribly painful death being flung into a ravine?” Of course it was actually death on impact and then death by exploding gas tank but he figures Shotaro doesn’t need to know that.

“Sir, if I could draw attention to your wording?”

“Hm?”

“It’s not your house anymore.”

He feels Jeno’s arm on his but that’s not enough to stop him right now. “Of course it’s my house, I bought it with my own fucking money! I live here, my name is on the deeds, what more proof do you need, asshole?”

“Renjun?” His husband’s nudging his arm again. “Renjun, we’re dead we don’t own anything anymore.”

“I’m afraid I have to agree with your husband here. As much as your house _was_ yours, whatever happens to it now is whatever you agreed on with your realestate agent in case of, well, unforeseen circumstances.”

It’s all a little too much now. He issues a few quick goodbyes and hangs up as quickly as he can before looking Jeno dead in the eye. “What did we put down in the in case of dying section?”

4.

Renjun’s problems started when he decided to date an architecture student, and a good one at that. One good enough to get a job at a decent firm after graduating and moving onto designing at only twenty-six years of age. He’d known for a little while that Jeno intended his latest project to be their new place of residence but knowing didn’t prepare him for the reality of what Jeno had done.

This rickety old turn-of-the-century house on the hill? The white weatherboards that creaked in the wind the gutter that clogged every 3 months? It was his. He’d found it on his own time; driven the three hours from their old apartment in the city to here for the inspections; outbit a hideous old couple who were definitely buying it off to be used as a sharehouse.

It was _his_ , though if the cheery voices of a family wandering through their home guided by a realter was anything to go by, this house had stopped being his a little while ago. Because Jeno, Jeno Jeno Jeno, his boyfriend of five years, married for another four, partner in life and crime and everything inbetween, had put their house on the market without telling him, under the impression that he’d have convinced Renjun to move by the time the inspections started. Them both dying had possibly thrown a wrench into his plans.

And even worse, getting his husband to sleep on the couch for the first few nights after their fateful phonecall with Shotaro had completely fallen through. A few minutes into lying down alone, he decided he missed the human-shaped blanket lump that usually lay beside him and stalked downstairs to drag Jeno up to bed by forearm.

And that’s where he was now, snuggled up in Jeno’s side, focussing on the gentle rise and fall of his husband’s chest.

“I’m sorry.” The words are whispered just above his ear and they tickle his scalp a little.

“I know you are,” is Renjun’s reply. Whatever malice that three hours ago would have been present in his voice had since been replaced with despair. “You did lie to me.”

“I didn’t exactly lie I just… withheld the truth of the situation. I thought you’d have come around before now.”

“You know me though,” he mumbles into Jeno’s shoulder, feeling the body beneath his shudder a little. “You know I don’t change my mind easily and you _know_ how I feel about this house. Jeno, I painted these walls with my own old man hands.”

His hand is lifted from his side and a kiss is pressed to the palm. “You do _not_ have old man hands.”

“Congratulations! You proved my point.” At this, Jeno drops his hand and rolls over to face him.

“Hm?”

“You go back on everything I say,” he said pointedly and his husband sighs before silencing him with a kiss and a particularly sweet one at that. _Ghost kiss_ , he smiles to himself as he falls asleep minutes later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tell me your most secret secrets in the comments and see you when i see you - remember to stay inside if you can and wear a mask when going out!! drink lots of water and stay healthy <33
> 
> tw // executions  
> ALSO KEEP AN EYE ON [THIS](http://twitter.com/DeathRowWatcher) ACCOUNT PLEASE


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> today i went to an art gallery for the first time in a whole year and my feet hurt really badly!! enjoy the debut of veeeery minor kunil and less minor (mentioned) chensung
> 
> yes the chapter count went up by one but that may change.. so long as i can only write in bouts of 1800 words and the plot continues to get more complicated in my mind, we might be here for a while.
> 
> part 7 is in jeno's perspective bc i am Experimenting

5.

The afternoon before key handover day finds Renjun slumped in a deckchair by the pool, face scrunched up in Kafka’s _Diaries_. He’d spent the entire morning positioning the chair under their giant beach umbrella and taking the time to mix himself a cocktail despite being unable to drink it – thank god the real estate agency hadn’t thrown out the majority of their furniture (and of course their extensive gin collection).

His husband emerges from the pool sometime after punctuated by the giant splash of him hauling himself up the pool ladder, hair clinging to his forehead and water dripping down his wide shoulders.

“Are you here alone?” he asks innocently, eyes tiny crescent moons.

Renjun looks up over the top of his book and narrows his eyes. “I’m married, sorry.” Despite turning the page and making it physically clear that he wants little more to do with this conversation, Jeno saunters over in all of his dripping wet and suntanned glory. _Did ghosts even get wet?_

“Well considering we’re the two most attractive people by this here poolside, shall we head on up to my hotel room?”

“We’re the only-” He groans and puts the book down. “You’re lucky I love you.”

A pair of wet arms are wrapped around him and before he can screech in protest, Jeno trails his hand up the back of Renjun’s thigh and his sour mood suddenly disappears.

“We’ve talked about this Jeno, you can’t solve every problem with sex.”

Before his husband can object, they hear the distinct sound of their pantry door slamming shut and footsteps coming through the dining room out towards the back door.

“And out here I’d want to put a pool house of some kind, you know, somewhere Jisung can hide during the summer holidays.” He can’t bring himself to turn around but for some reason, the scream never comes. _Why aren’t they screaming?_ Jeno looks for him, watching the couple as they exit the house through Renjun’s newly installed glass sliding doors and come out to stand on the deck.

Renjun and Jeno are huddled together not even five feet away so _why aren’t they screaming_.

The taller one of the two gestures out towards the pool. “The agent says it was tiled back in the twenties… That’s almost a hundred years ago. Can’t be safe, can it.”

“I’ll add it to the list,” the other replies brightly and after giving the garden a last once-over, they head back inside. Meanwhile, Jeno has the decency to pick up his clothes from the poolside and dress himself.

Now see, Renjun has always been a very sensible person. “HEY!” he yells out, “YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO ARRIVE TOMORROW! GET OUT OF MY DRAWING ROOM!”

Jeno looks at him in horror but a response from the couple never arrives – they continue on their merry way back to the front where (having followed them through _his_ house) Renjun spies a moving truck on the roadside and a boy dressed entirely in black perched on his mailbox. When the driver comes round to bring up the roller door the truck opens to reveal piece upon piece of floral furniture, a piano, and several sets of antique bookshelves. Renjun mimes throwing up.

“Jisung! Get up here and help your father move his armchair inside.” The boy, Jisung, pockets his phone and glares all the way up to the truck, kicking up dust but just avoiding the line of violets that Renjun and Jeno had sewn by the road not months ago. _There’d be no one to look after them now_ , he laments. Jisung was now begrudgingly helping his father move said armchair from their driveway all the way up to the door where they argue on how to get it inside.

“We may have to widen the door, Kun. If your chair doesn’t fit, nothing will.” _Kun, huh?_

And then it hits him. Turning to Jeno in a fit of horror, he hisses, “Jeno, these interlopers are quite literally breaking our door down.”

To his credit, Jeno does look a little distressed but Renjun is quickly distracted by the crash of fallen furniture: the armchair plummets from the arms of father and son down to the hard gravel of Renjun’s lovingly lain footpath. Jisung is looking right at him. He’s looking at the both of them.

“Can I help you?” he snaps in Jisung’s direction and, taken completely aback, the boy silently helps his father lift the armchair back down to the truck (though granted his eyes never leave Jeno and Renjun). Kun and Taeil, as they soon find the other’s name is, wander back inside to further invade Renjun and Jeno’s privacy and the two of them are left alone with Jisung.

The boy nudges his head towards the back of the house and Renjun follows him, Jeno in tow. To say they’re terrified is an understatement.

“You’re dead, aren’t you.” Jisung delivers his words as more of a statement than a question. “I’ve read enough ghost stories, you know,” he adds for good measure.

Jeno gives the boy his sunniest smile – he was always the less sceptical of the two of them. “Hi!” he begins brightly, “Yes, my name is Jeno and this is my husband Renjun; we both died maybe a month ago.” Jeno glances over at him and just to spite the kid, Renjun presses a kiss to his husband’s cheek before turning back the conversation.

“Are you haunting this place or something?”

Renjun doesn’t quite have a response to that one and it would appear his husband doesn’t either.

“Or are you stuck here. It happens,” Jisung says, eyes thoughtful above his scrunched nose, “I’ve read all about it. They don’t let you leave if you have anything tying you to this world.”

“Would you happen to know any way around that rule?” Asking a teenager for help with a matter as sensitive as his future in the afterlife would seem outrageous in any other context, but right now Jisung was possibly their only hope. Jeno’s eyes remain trained on the boy, arm clasped around Renjun’s side. This was the moment they had been waiting for: finally getting on that bus to heaven without having to relinquish his house to some random couple with a taste for hideous antique furniture.

Jisung grins. “Do you know what a poltergeist is?”

6.

A little after Kun, Taeil and Jisung leave for their celebratory moving in dinner, the phone rings.

“This is Yeri from the afterlife administration centre! Just following up on my co-worker’s notes here – has there been any change in situation since you last spoke to us on the phone?” They shouldn’t have expected any less than to be passed along to yet another caseworker. Renjun misses Shotaro. And since lying has always come easier to him than to Jeno (though recent events make him question this) so Renjun is the one who deals with the conversation.

“Good, good! There’s a new family moved in and they seem nice enough. A good fit for this house, I think. I need a little more time to let go of it, though – say another week or so.”

“That’s wonderful to hear! We’ll send the bus down a week from now.”

He’s about to say goodbye so he and Jeno can head off to bed but they’re interrupted by a crackle over the line. “I’m seeing here that no one’s checked off the box that shows you’ve been walked through the health and safety practices regarding co-habitating with the living. May I have five minutes of your time to quickly run you through it?”

It didn’t seem like they had much of a choice and, after a full ten minutes of Yeri rattling off a list of dot points from her computer screen, they’re finally done. “Oh and of course, any contact with Nana and his associates is completely illegal.”

“What the fuck kind of name is Nana?”

“You have nothing to worry about then. I’ll call again to check up in a few days,” she says brightly. And with that, the line cuts off.

Jeno returns to phone to its stand and, still a little frazzled, they head upstairs to make the most of their last night before the new couple ruins their bed with paisley sheets.

7.

Jisung frowns. “I’m out of ideas then.”

“What do you mean?”

Kun and Taeil are out again so the three of them are seated in the kitchen: Jisung seated cross-legged on the kitchen island, him and Renjun side-by-side at the dinner table.

The boy scrunches his nose at Renjun. “That’s the name of the poltergeist I was gonna summon for you with Chenle.”

“Who’s this Chenle now?” For not the first time this week, Jeno finds himself restraining his husband. Renjun meant well but these were trying times – this house was his husband's flesh and blood. The two of them had spent every free minute fixing the house up from the derelict state they’d bought it in; repainting the walls, installing a new kitchen, and replacing all the furniture with bright modern pieces that brought life to their strange white weatherboard house in the middle of nowhere.

Jisung goes red and he thinks he knows where this is going. “Chenle’s my best friend. Anyway, if summoning Nana really is illegal, I should get to work on finding another something to scare my parents out of here.”

A pointed look from Renjun.

“You think I _want_ to live in this house? It’s like a three-hour drive to the city and the closest store only sells tinned peaches.” Jeno had never thought about it like that before – he and Renjun had always driven to work together and thus the drive never felt three hours long, though he couldn’t fault Jisung on the local shops point. Up until they died, the two of them bought groceries in the city on the way home from work and simply prayed to God that the milk didn’t spoil in the car.

His husband looks at him and they silently agree that this Nana may be their best option right now, provided none of their three caseworkers (and counting) found out. Jeno looks at the boy sitting up on their kitchen counter. “Easy then. I think you just say his name three times really quickly and then he appears or something?”

“Didn’t you want to wait for your friend?”

“We _are_ waiting! This is just a trial run – we summon him and then kick him out.” He stretches his hands out in front of him and smirks. “So, who wants to try first?”

Jeno looks over at his husband and with a huff, Renjun stands and smooths out his white dress shirt.

“Nananananana.” Silence. And then-

“You could say my name with a little more interest, you know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TO THE COMMENTER WHO SAID THEY WERE EXCITED ABOUT MEETING JAEMIN IN THIS CHAPTER, I AM SO SORRY D:
> 
> give me your secrets you want to give me your secrets in the comments go on *why not do it*


End file.
